I've complained before about the shortage of meaningful statistics in racing, about the fact that our culture remains romantic and impressionistic, rather than rational and precise. But away with such grouchiness because this is the time of year when we stats-starved punters greet the latest version of the Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide as if we were the thirsty soldiers glugging down lager at the end of Ice Cold In Alex.

The Guide, written and researched by the very dedicated Paul Jones, is packed with exactly the kind of research that you will struggle to find anywhere else and my personal experience is that it greatly enhances my enjoyment of the Festival. The idea, of course, is that it will help you to find winners. Maybe I'm slow, but I still find that to be a pretty tricky business, despite having bought the Guide every year for a decade. Still, it is a surprisingly good source of comfort, as you tear up another betting slip, to be able to say: "How could that thing have won? That race hasn't gone to a seven-year-old since decimalisation!"

I've chipped in my own tuppence-worth to this year's publication, in the humorously titled "Expert's View" section (I put up Zaynar for the Champion Hurdle because the thing went to print before he got beat at Kelso) and as a result I feel entitled to share just a very little bit of Paul's work with you. Here is my countdown of the five most interesting Festival-related stats, in the hope that they will give you something new to think about in relation to some of this year's races.

Not all of these are culled from this year's Guide but, since I've been reading Jones's work for a decade now, I think we can fairly say that this week's Claims Five is entirely inspired by his work. Here's hoping that more racing folk adopt his hard-working, studious approach to the game.

5) Five-year-olds are 1/82 since 1985 in the Champion Hurdle

This is the stat that shows the impact of Jones's work, since he kept hammering on about it, year after year, until it became widely known. And then, of course, Katchit came along and won the 2008 Champion Hurdle at the age of five and there was much rejoicing among Jones's critics.

Still, it remains the case that Katchit is the only five-year-old to have won the race since See You Then in 1985, despite the fact that 82 have tried, including such talented animals as Kribensis, Hors La Loi and Punjabi, all of whom won the race in later years with the benefit of greater maturity. It seems to me that the case against youngsters remains as sound as ever. No one ever said they couldn't win – See You Then, Night Nurse and Persian War are among those to have done it – but, with rare exceptions, horses as young as five are unlikely to be up to the task.

So you can imagine my horror to find, in this year's Guide, that Jones has recanted. Scared by the fact that the second, third and fourth in last year's race were five, he has had a rethink. "Training methods have changed and we have to change with them," he says.

I think he has abandoned his guns a little early. The form of last year's Champion looks weak and there was an unusually high representation of youth, seven five-year-olds, all of whom found a way to get beaten. Yes, they went close, but other five-year-olds have gone close over the last 20 years, as Jones knows. Close is not enough.

All that being said, I am not keen to oppose this year's big-name five-year-old, Zaynar. He looks to me like a youngster who might well be tough enough to get home in front, if he is quick enough, which is more doubtful. Starluck, a 16-1 shot, looks much more open to the charge of lacking physical maturity.

4) 8/18 Supreme winners had just two prior runs over hurdles

The point here is that most runners in the Supreme Novice Hurdle have had three or more attempts over obstacles before turning up for the Festival, and that will generally include the fancied runners, as they will have had more chances to impress.

But this is the kind of race in which some of the participants are improving so rapidly that their performance will dramatically outstrip anything they have shown before. These horses are like icebergs, showing little above the water, hiding their substance from view, waiting to sink those foolish enough to imagine they can just sail past.

The eight recent winners to have overcome their lack of experience include Ebaziyan, the 40-1 winner in 2007, when he was one of just three runners with fewer than three previous starts over hurdles. There was also Sausalito Bay (14-1), who beat Best Mate in 2000, while Captain Cee Bee was the most recent winner in this category, two years ago.

When the Festival's opening race comes round, you can either go with the known talent of Dunguib (a 4-5 shot after four wins over hurdles) or take a chance on the potential of one of his lightly raced rivals, who could be anything. The way this year's race is shaping up, the value is surely with the unexposed outsiders . . . though it might fairly be argued that there will be no point in looking if Dunguib is as good as he seems.

3) Noel Meade is 3/124 at the Festival

One of the enduring puzzles at Cheltenham is the lack of success of Noel Meade, an excellent trainer with a stable that is always full of talent. Meade has been champion trainer in Ireland on many occasions and it is not as though he doesn't know how to plunder races in Britain – Kempton's Christmas Hurdle has fallen to him four times in six years, thanks to three different horses.

But Cheltenham has proved almost entirely unrewarding. It was a big deal when Sausalito Bay broke his duck in the 2000 Supreme and many thought that that might open the floodgates, but the only victories since then have been Go Native in the same race last year and Nicanor in the 2006 equivalent of what is now called the Neptune. One win every five years? Quite a few trainers do better than that with lesser horses.

His beaten runners have included two 5-2 shots and two more at 11-4, none of which even managed a place. The heartbreakers are headed by Hill Society, beaten a short-head in the 1998 Arkle, and Native Dara, clear over the last in the Coral Cup two years later, only to be collared close home by What's Up Boys. And, of course, no one who saw it will ever forget Harchibald's extraordinary failure to go past Hardy Eustace in the 2005 Champion.

A partial explanation may be the pattern of Meade's typical year, in which he fires out winners through the autumn and early winter before running out of ammunition after New Year. His strike rate in Ireland through January was 3%, though he bounced back to 12% in February.

Some take the view that his horses are peaking so early in the season that they have simply had enough by this stage. But each year there are horses that Meade trains sympathetically, with the Festival in mind, and it could hardly be more surprising that he has not had better results from them.

Perhaps Go Native will be the one to give Meade a popular first success outside novice company, which would be sweetened by a £1m bonus from the WBX betting exchange, as the horse has already won two legs of their "hurdling triple crown". Meade is no mercenary but £1m would presumably go some way to making up for all his years of inexplicable frustration and futility.

2) Nicky Henderson is 0/20 in the Neptune Novice Hurdle

To put this in context, Henderson has racked up 34 victories at the Festival, more than any other trainer with a current licence. The only one who ever got more was Fulke Walwyn (40) and Henderson is within two good Festivals of equalling his record.

Henderson is also mustard with hurdlers, so it is a real surprise to me that his record in this race is so poor. It is not just a case of his not quite having had the winner yet – his 20 losers have been soundly beaten for the most part, despite some of them being fancied.

There was Aigle D'Or (4-1), Mad Max (6-1), Travado (15-2) and Duc De Regniere (9-1) but it is 22 years since Henderson had a placed runner, Rustle, and in all that time only one of his horses has finished better than 10th.

The Lambourn trainer is known for his success with two-mile hurdlers, so it may be that he has simply not gone looking for horses that need a longer distance to show their best. When he runs a horse over half a mile further, it may be as much because the horse is slow as because it stays.

This year, punters must decide if there is a genuine reason behind this stat or if it is just a meaningless coincidence. Henderson will run Finian's Rainbow, currently the 15-2 second-favourite for the Neptune, and may also field Quantitativeeasing, seventh in the betting at 16-1.

Twenty is a small sample. Are you so impressed by either of his runners that you can take a chance on Henderson finally breaking his duck?

1) 15/16 Gold Cup winners were aged between seven and nine

Who does that exclude? Oh yes, Denman and Kauto Star, both of whom are 10 this year. For months, we have talked of this as a two-horse race and yet each of our heroes is trying to do something that has been achieved by just 6% of recent Gold Cup winners.

There have been a good handful of 10-year-old winners of the race, in fairness. The most recent was Cool Dawn in 1998, while Desert Orchid was one of three in the 10 years before that. Silver Buck was 10 when he won, as was The Dikler. That makes six successful 10-year-olds in 40 years.

But there hasn't been a Gold Cup winner older than 10 since 1969, back in a time when very few of the runners would be regarded as properly fit by today's standards. Age takes the edge off a horse's speed, blunts his enthusiasm, dulls his ability to recover from a mistake and to quicken when asked.

It makes everything more difficult and, no matter how good the horse, there will come a time when it makes the difference. You can be Moscow Flyer or Istabraq but you will not escape defeat forever.

Those two were repeat winners of races that have regularly thrown up repeat winners. The Gold Cup is different. Kauto Star is just the second horse in my lifetime to win it more than once. Staying chasers hardly ever have longer than a year at the top of their game and their discipline is so demanding that injury often prevents them from defending their title, as it did with Looks Like Trouble, Kicking King and War Of Attrition.

Age and exertion will catch up with Denman and Kauto Star at some point; indeed, they may already have Denman in their grasp. Sure, Kauto looked as young as ever when he tore away with the King George but Kempton is not the sort of place to expose the beginnings of frailty. That would happen at a much more demanding track, like Cheltenham, a place where, even now, Kauto's strike rate is only 50%.

For my money, he is still a better horse than any that oppose him. But this stat makes me wonder if he is more at risk than I imagine. If he gets beaten in a fortnight's time and there is no obvious excuse, we will be forced to accept that a brilliant and unusually durable talent is on the wane.